"The cult of the omnipotent state has millions of followers in the united States. Americans of today view their government in the same way as Christians view their God; they worship and adore the state and they render their lives and fortunes to it. Statists believe that their lives -- their very being -- are a privilege that the state has given to them. They believe that everything they do is -- and should be -- dependent on the consent of the government." ~ Jacob Hornberger

We have a similar situation here in South Africa. Partly to protect us against ourselves, and partly through sheer greed, the government has, over the past decade or two, levied ever increasing "sin" taxes on tobacco and alcohol. Result? There is now a huge underground market for smuggled cigarettes, and of course, a whole new class of criminals has been created, and this in a country that already suffers from one of the highest crime rates in the world.

Normally if a bully approaches you on the street and does everything in his power to intimidate you and pick a fight with you, how do you extricate yourself from that situation? Talk to him? Try and reason with a bully? That's like negotiating with a terrorist. No matter what you do, the outcome will be the same.

This is what I call the "Caecescu Moment". It was that moment in December 1989 when then Dictator of Romania gave a speech to a very large crowd outside his palace, and the young kids booed him. That set off a revolution, and by Christmas, he was tried and executed. I remember that look on his face when the crowd booed him for the very first time. He was completely surprised by it.
And now, the dictatorial NYPD have had their Caecescu Moment on twitter, and although I can't see anyone's face when it happened, hopefully they got the message about peoples non-existent positive feelings about them.

David Gregory is an a** kissing suckup to the powers that be, and his audience is able to discern that on their own, so they watch something else when he comes on. I'm encouraged by this failure. I'm hoping for many more in all the news media outlets.

"Contraband’s scent should have been suppressed as a legal pretext for roadside searches years ago. It is impossible to disprove what anyone claims to have smelled, and the litany of abuses in such circumstances could easily fill volumes."
Much worse, being arrested by a dog. And don't forget "Clever Hans":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
The dogs get their cues from their handlers, never mind the scent. It's amazing what sorts of things we permit the minions to do to us, and the justifications we are able to swallow for it. As a Colonel House once wrote, "What was done to those who permitted it is almost beyond belief."
"If our society is to maintain any level of decency, all members of it need to fear legal strictures equally. If an illegal search is truly illegal, the searchers must be cuffed, printed, arraigned, tried and imprisoned."
Not gonna happen. The rulers are not going to let their enforcers be tied up in legal strictures. The only strictures left are informal, generally illegal ones, applied on the spot by the victims. That, or bend over and grab your ankles.
After a while one gets the notion that this meme of "rights", far from stopping state abuse, is actually necessary for its continuance. People without such fantasies in their heads would not be looking for the rulers to set things right for themselves, and would take things into their own hands. Then it would stop, because we far outnumber them. They would run out of thugs.

I have some doubts about the reliability of the site from which this article comes - it seems steeped in the culture of paranoid conspiracy theories and stuff like that. But let me take the information on face value.
Although I am a school teacher myself, I am somewhat reluctant to comment seeing as I am not formally qualified in education. I am instead qualified in the subjects I teach. I have to say, with that first example, I cannot make head or tails of the method they are using to arrive at the answer.
On the whole, I think it is a perfectly good idea for kids to understand positional notation, and be able to break numbers into bits and pieces, but the way they do it here seems to me extremely convoluted and indeed incomprehensible. In my classes, kids are expected to be able to do two digit addition and subtraction in their heads, and with enough practice doing that, you quickly develop an ability to break apart numbers into convenient chunks all by yourself.
And the notion that any answer will do, as long as the student can come up with some reason for it, is just daft. I expect my students to know their multiplication and division tables. Some of these are already tricky enough to remember; we really need not confuse them even further.
Not being qualified in education, I am reluctant to criticize the presumed experts too much, but it seems to me they are over-complicating things. My older brother taught me to read and write when I was six and he was ten. I.e. teaching kids literacy and numeracy is not rocket science. So why all the grand theories and complicated methods and huge bureaucracy? It doesn't seem to make any sense.
The old methods, which are now suddenly so bad, produced generations of fine scientists and engineers. I have to wonder why we need to change everything now. The whole issue may well be a fruitful research subject for an investigative reporter. Here in South Africa, a lot of the government's education policy seems to be quite deliberately designed to keep people dumb, and to create ways in which kids who fail a grade can nevertheless be passed onto the next grade. We have become the world's major producer of illiterate and innumerate (and plain useless and quite unemployable) school leavers.
The whole thing seems very weird, but there may be all manner of politics behind it that may be worth investigating.

I don't foresee the end of schools any time soon. What we might hope to see is the end of is government schools.
Of course I am biased, seeing as I am a teacher at the kind of private school I hope will soon replace government schools. :-)
Here in South Africa, the current government inherited a fairly good, if extremely regimented, public school system, and within two decades managed to reduce it to utter ruins. But that is of course very good news for people like me: private schools have been mushrooming all over the place.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety), by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
- H.L. Mencken

Telkom also has a monopoly on telecommunications infrastructure. The result is hugely expensive internet. But of course, seeing as government has such a big finger in the pie, and it is such a lucrative way to extort money from already overburdened tax payers, I'm not holding my breath waiting for the situation to change.
South Africa is actually a very useful case study for root strikers the world over: government has managed to run almost everything into the ground here, by heavy taxes, draconian labour law, corruption, crony capitalism and general mismanagement, not to mention outright theft by none other than the president himself. We have an election coming up; the very small, and just launched local libertarian party was effectively prevented from participating by the prohibitive cost of registering as participant.
So much for the wonderful new democracy. :-)

Some good news from, of all places, Zimbabwe:
http://mg.co.za/article/2014-04-11-zim-informal-economy-fast-taking-over
The article mentions something the article in the original STR post also does: it's pretty difficult for government to extract taxes from such small businesses. All the more reason then to have them. :-)

"Why? What’s the difference?"
The difference, as others have noted, is that they can beat you up and get away with it. The reason they get away with it, is that their victims usually submit.
But it seems lately, people are backed up against the wall and are starting to question automatic submission. Many have given up on it. The house of cards is about to fall. It should get pretty exciting...

This horror of majority rule is a hangover from the aristocrat Montesquieu. I'm not a fan of it myself, being an anarchist; but I don't imagine "representative government" is any better for liberty than majority rule is. Indeed, in my current state Oregon, between what we get via Initiative and what we get from the legislature, I'll take the former every time, as it consistently leans more toward liberty than the legislature does. What's more, there is a lot less of it; the legislature considers something like 3000 bills every session.
Oh, and it is not the job of a free people to ride herd on corrupt "respresentatives".

Paul:
"...One manipulates people by manipulating the language they use to think..."
A major reason I avoid the use of the term "right" or "rights" in these kinds of essays and conversations. Definition games, indeed.
Like "...defining 'state'..." I am a sovereign state. Want me to define "state"?
What part of "state" do you not understand?
Sam

Last sentence, first paragraph:
Perhaps, if you’re sufficiently annoyed, you could send a copy to the authorities, asking that they put a halt to such a scam.
I submit, Paul, that your essay would have been worthy of a "10" instead of an "8" by simply enclosing "the authorities" in quotation marks.
There is only so much I can do about various levels of gangsters grouped into officious-sounding "revenue departments" in every area of the known world. In fact, the link I embedded in the last sentence equally outlines the problem: the writer(s) not only misspelled "Unempathic" in the title (excusable, even as a retired English teacher I often misspell third grade words without "spell-check") -- but also, and far worse, they used the term "...Our Rulers..." also in the title (not excusable).
Which makes my point.
But they have somehow gotten themselves elected to positions of “public service,” and Lo!! They have thereby acquired the power to control your person and property. It is an amazing, and sadly unappreciated, phenomenon. “Public servants,” it seems, are those privileged people who are to be served by the public.
As I said, there is only so much I can do about this. I can abstain from beans, and gently encourage you and all my family, neighbors and friends to also abstain. And I can gingerly sidestep serving the "public servants", except when to do so is impossible or impractical.
I have been an "illegal tax protestor" since 1978, but don't necessarily recommend you follow that path. There is a price to be paid flailing at the status-quo, and one needs to be prepared for that expenditure. But if s/he steadfastly stands his ground (and maintains a very low profile) they eventually give up to seek more vulnerable meat to chew. Their resources are limited -- and becoming more so as their economy collapses.
I maintain you can be free. Right here, right now.
I am a sovereign state. That does not mean that I am bulletproof. It simply means I am sui juris -- fully responsible for managing my own affairs. In the way I walk, in the way I talk, in the way I think. My President maintains the rotation of the earth on its axis. "Our rulers" are not "my rulers".
I refrain from involvement in "movements" -- I see that as a fool's game (thanks, Per).
I try to share my liberty and my freedom with family and friends -- when they ask.
The example I set is far more effective than any group undertaking. Groups end up with leaders who themselves often become tyrannical, full of ego and vanity.
I can be free in an unfree world. Sam

The power of words, Dr. Hein! The barrel of that gun is showing beneath all the perfumed verbiage of the IRS.
You must sign the "voluntary" form that says you understand and agree with over 72,000 pages of tax law, at gunpoint, of course.
Your signature or your brains on the contract, saith Don Corleone. Same thing. Bitcoins are soon to be used in the marketplace with Bitwasp. Think of the Invisible Man.

This may have been part of the original intent, or not, depending upon your interpretation of history. Regardless, bureaucrats long ago discovered that they could more effectively preserve and consolidate their power by pitching the "public safety" jargon as the weaponry became bigger and more powerful over time...and hence, more capable of competing with and deposing them. Of course, as with all else Orwellian, up is down, in is out, and black is white.

The saving grace in all of this is that some tiny percentage of the kids that see this already have enough of an innate lie detector that they can sense that official policies like the one that produced the "tripod panic" is not really protecting anyone's safety.
But they still don't know what it *is* actually for. All they see is the adults surrounding them, the people controlling every minute of their young lives, completely losing their minds.
For the kids who are not yet skeptical enough to doubt the adults, this is compliance training for future submission to authority. Once the populace is trained to instantly obey in any crisis, all that remains to exercise tyranny is to produce a permanent crisis, or a continual series of them.
Realize that you are responsible for your own security, always. Come up with your own disaster plan. It may seem cliche, but imagine what you would do if a zombie horde came to town. It stands in for a variety of natural and man-made disasters, from tornado damage to disease outbreak to martial law, anything where you must not only survive, but do so in the face of a persistent and implacable environmental threat to your safety. And be aware that the stress might make people "turn zombie" on you.
And in a world where calling the cops just might get *you* shot and killed, just for being a crime victim (LAPD recently shot two stabbing victims when they arrived at the crime scene) you should know that people arriving late to the party might not actually be there for your benefit.

By government calculus, this story, combined with Blackstone's formulation, proves that 10 guilty persons must have been prevented from escaping each of the 25 years Fleming was unjustly imprisoned. That's 250 hardened criminals off the streets! How can you argue with that?
And I eagerly await the news that the former prosecutor who intentionally suppressed exculpatory evidence will be required to compensate Fleming using his own personal time and accounts. Which we should be hearing about.... nnnnow. No? Should be soon. Like now. Huh. I was almost positive that the state would be practically falling over itself to right the wrongs of its employees and designated representatives in the course of their assigned duties. ~sarcasm~
The state steals little bits of our lives every day. Five minutes here. An hour there. Another 40 minutes filling out forms. Two hours on hold correcting transcription errors from entering said forms into a computer. Time that you spent working that was taken as taxes.
The truth is that government probably steals 25 years or more away from *everyone's* lives. They just do it a little at a time rather than all at once. Are you as mad about that as you are about this blatant, callous injustice in the article? Did you realize that even after this, the state will continue to take things from this man against his will, with even less in the way of apology or admission of wrong?

I'm sure a lot of people are asking, "Why can the government 'misplace' more money than I will ever see in my entire lifetime, and just shrug it off, when I risk having my power cut off if I come up even $100 short this month?"
People will always be more prudent with their own money than they are with someone else's, and they will be more careful with a known someone else's than with a pile of loose cash notionally owned by 300 million anonymous people.
The really sad thing is that a lot of people are also telling themselves, "Wow. If only some of that had disappeared into *my* pockets..." And those are the people who will cause the next $12billion to "disappear", with no responsibility, accountability, or consequences.

The article describes just one way in which business profits warp the course of scientific inquiry.
170 million (metric) tons of sugar are produced annually, worldwide. You probably eat 33 kg of that total yourself every year. The industry rakes in about $75billion per year.
The world spends about 2% of what it makes from its routine business on science and research. The US spends a little less than 3%. That's for all science, across every discipline.
From this, we might assume that research specific to promoting and improving sugar and the sugar industry could easily be funded by about $1billion to $2billion per year (wsro.org). Obviously, the sugar industry prefers to fund science that ultimately makes it more profitable, and has a vested interest in suppressing results unfavorable to that end.
If sugar is found, in a scientifically verifiable way, to be unhealthy, then who profits? Well, you do, I suppose, since you will know that you should cut your consumption of it. But are you spending 3% of everything you earn on science? You might think that you are when you surrender taxes, but in the most shocking of revelations, much of the $150billion spent on publicly funded science goes to the military (50%). Sugar research might, between health care, general science, and agriculture, manage a fraction of 25% of the public science budget, or a maximum of $38billion.
To match the potential of industry-funded science, sugar alone would need to get 2.5% of all remotely-relevant tax-fed research budgets, and more than 85% of that research would need to directly impact public health concerns.
And that ignores the fact that the state also wants the science that it funds to make its businesses more profitable, and therefore more exploitable for its own ends.
Scientists need to eat and pay rents, too. And being intelligent creatures, they tend to shy away from jobs that would guarantee their future poverty, and possibly risk having their careers destroyed by persistent, coordinated, and well-funded smear campaigns by businesses threatened by any potentially unprofitable truths that may be revealed.
So when money and politics get involved, no one even bothers to investigate whether or not excessive fructose consumption is the greatest single factor for deaths from lifestyle-linked diseases. Anyone who would can expect to see colleagues--scientists who set a lower price on their own ethics--contradicting any inconvenient results from the driver's seats of their new luxury cars.

So the government that pretends to represent my interests could be replaced by one that no longer pretends.
It could also be replaced by one that actually does represent my interests.
And, in the longest of all long shots, it could be replaced by nothing at all, like an out-of-control homeowners' association that paid just a bit too much attention to other people's grass. Or even their "grass".
Anything could happen, so in my estimation, it is very likely that nothing will.

The right to bear arms is a natural derivative of the right to own tools. (I define a tool as any item that magnifies one's capability to perform a specific task.)
A weapon magnifies your ability to defend yourself in the same manner that a hammer and nails magnifies your ability to semi-permanently join bits of wood. While the right to bear arms is explicitly enumerated by several states and nations, because the task of defense is particularly important and somewhat difficult, in essence, the weapon is just a tool. It doesn't matter one little bit to what purpose it is intended to be used. People have as much right to own a gun for the purpose of robbing and killing people as they do to own it for the purpose of rescuing innocent children and cute puppies and kittens from harm.
The *thing* is not the focus of the statement of rights, but the *person* or the *people*.
You have the right to defend your life, liberty, and property--and anyone else's as well. Therefore, you have the right to possess and use any item that helps you to do so. You have the right to own a gun. You have the right to build fences and walls. You have the right to record and retransmit any activity occurring on your land. You have the right to make the notional castle of your home into a castle in fact. And you have the right to own any future technology that is useful for your own protection.
Why linger upon wording that includes "state" when these declarations should be saying that people have the "right to defend lives, liberty, and property, by any means at their disposal," and include for the sake of clarity "including but not limited to routine ownership and possession of weaponry and armor."
That would be as good as saying that anything the state allows its soldiers to do, it must also allow the public to do. Soldiers have scary-looking rifles? You have to let the people have them. Soldiers have grenades? People get them too. Soldiers drive tanks? The state has to be ok with giant privately owned SUVs on the roads, covered with armor plates, pusher bars, improved tires, and bullet-resistant windows.
The very fact that they make reference to the state is a door that swings both ways. Not only are you allowed to defend yourself, but you are also allowed to do so with militarily relevant hardware.
"But your honor, the state constitution recognizes my right to bear arms in defense of the state, and considering the magnitude of potential threats to this state, I feel that I am unable to do so effectively without this supersonic fighter jet at my disposal. If I am forced to transfer its ownership to the National Guard, I will no longer be able to exercise my right as effectively."
Strike the root.

Well, “The people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state,” somehow sounds better than, “The people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the rulers.” Which is in turn better sounding than, “The people have a right to bear arms for the defense of the rulers,” which is all they care about. Where would government be without euphemism?
Also, the rulers want the people to identify with the state, rather than opposing it, so government pronouncements are full of language that boils down to wrapping themselves in the flag.
One manipulates people by manipulating the language they use to think.

An ingenious theory, Mike, but since the answer to your question is presented in detail in the article under which you are commenting, I'll not waste time repeating myself - even though I have more of it available now, readers of this exchange may not.
Thank you for your repeated wishes of good luck.

Oh my goodness, Jim!
First of all, I've followed your spat with Paul Bonneau since the beginning-and it is just that, a spat. You and he, and you and I for that matter(though for somewhat different reasons), have a fundamental difference of opinion on philosophy. Sadly, rather than debate the merits of opposing views, you have both engaged in petty name calling. Since you are apparently proud of what ought to be an embarrassment, I'll point out that you started the ad hominem attacks and ceaseless innuendo.
The idea that Paul is a government agent-and now also a communist-is patently absurd...frankly I laughed when I first read it two years ago. I wish Paul would have laughed as well. No doubt there are government agents viewing, or even commenting, here, but I very much doubt that they take the time to become as familiar with the various aspects of philosophy that Paul clearly has. And, bluntly, even if he writes from Fort Meade it does nothing to challenge the views he expresses. Views that you have yet to address. Denigration of a challenger does not prove your position. It weakens it, since it shows you have no intellectual response to the challenge.
That said, I have rarely seen much in the way of moderation on this site-which is something I approve of, frankly, which is why I don't expect any here. In the past several years I can think of only one or two people who have been banned from the site, and in those cases it was due to true trolling. Neither you or Paul are trolls, you have both contributed to the site multiple times.
There have been, to my knowledge, no actual physical threats that would require action, and in all honesty the name calling has been rather mild in my opinion. I have most certainly been called worse many times...sometimes in person. Controversy is good for a website, it draws viewers. If it was my website, I certainly would not get involved in such pettiness, if for no other reason than I'd have no idea where to stop in my censorship. In any event, Rob's decision seems rather apparent, so why the theatrics? If you are unsatisfied, just go!
Clearly you now view this site as a nest of communism, with its owner actively promoting communism. If so, why even try to stick around? Why would you make such silly accusations? It is beneath you. Since you now have more time, I hope you'll consider the following, and respond rationally:
Mudslinging aside, I think your real problem is that you are caught in a catch-22. You are a militant atheist( by that I mean that you are strident in your atheism...it's not a cut), yet your belief system requires that there be an overarching, universal morality that simply must-in order to be universal-contain an element that is greater than the simple product of human minds. "Rights" to you cannot simply be concepts developed by humans in order to organize a society. They cannot simply be, what they are according to history, products of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization; concepts that were developed by theologians in keeping with religious dogma and designed to secure authority for the same. They cannot be arbitrary and open to debate, they must have been "discovered" and as such "universal."
That view is in direct contradiction to your atheism. That is why you can never address challenges to your viewpoint with anything other than logical fallacies-such as appeals to authority-and ad hominem. You don't have any other answer! You can't have. The inconsistency is at the core of your philosophy, it is why you believe everyone must come to agree, through "re-education", with what is your secular religion.
I've challenged you on this point many times over the years, well before Paul started writing about "rights" I believe, and have never gotten a satisfactory defense of your position. I honestly cannot think of one that allows both atheism and universal morality. As close as I've been able to come is a utilitarian argument that it would be better if everyone believed the same. That argument fails, however, since morality transcends utilitarian arguments; you claim to know a universal "right and wrong," not a universal "better." "Better" is of course, always a matter of debate, it is not the absolute that you claim. Which means that such a utilitarian argument itself undermines your viewpoint.
Do you have an answer for this? Anything other than because Aristotle said so, or that I'm a communist?
I have nothing against you, Jim. I think you are totally sincere, and I think that your writing has merit, but I also think your philosophy has a glaring inconsistency. That is not a bad thing, it presents the opportunity for intellectual growth. It is why philosophers debate. You can either address the inconsistency and better understand your own philosophy in the process, you can modify your views to to make them consistent, or you can ignore the challenge and continue to lash out at challengers as though they were attackers. I hope you take the high road. Even if you don't, I hope you, at least privately, take the time to evaluate your position and come to terms with the inconsistency.
In any event, Good Luck!
Mike

Mike, I've found already that one of the benefits of not having to wonder where the next STRticle is going to come from is that I can give more time and attention to your comments. I still haven't got far into this one, but your very first sentence has yielded valuable information.
First, you refer to Paul v Jim as a "squabble." That word usually refers to a minor spat, a clash of personality, a storm in a teacup, yes? Then Mike, it also reveals that you have very little idea about what's going on. Had you written something like "a fundamental disagreement about the nature of humanity, government and freedom" your keyboarding fingers would have been more weary but you'd have been a heap closer to the facts.
Second (well, first actually), you express surprise that I would "expect" Rob, our Editor, to "jump in to the middle" of this conflict. It's your surprise that surprises me.
See, Rob owns STR. It's his site, his property. So why would he not wish to jump in and resolve a conflict between two of his most prolific writers? To take care of one's property is rather basic, and certainly normal behavior. It's mud season here in New Hampshire, and shortly I shall scrub the car and give her a waxing. Perhaps you'll do the same. We take care of things we own, that's normal. If it were a rental car, I'd probably not bother. So the question is, why would anyone not expect Rob to take care of his property in this way? - the ABnormal response would be for him to ignore it.
Here is what I suspect. I suspect you have already succumbed to the poison Paul Bonneau wrote on March 26th, when he denied that he (or anyone else) has rights. An important member of the infinite set of rights that Paul said nobody has, is the right to property. Thus, I suspect that already in your mind, Rob doesn't actually hold any property rights in STR - because nobody has rights. And that, I'm guessing, is why you phrased your question the way you did.
Property requires owners; air and ocean have no owners because they aren't property, and vice versa. (Hence pollution, incidentally.) Marx tried to solve that logical problem by proposing that all property is properly owned in common, and so embraced Communism. Same word-root, same meaning. Thus, by asserting that we have no rights, which must include property rights, Paul is literally declaring himself a Communist.
So Rob, by continuing to allow him to be published on Strike the Root, is promoting Communism. The irony here is quite rich. He owns the site, yet is using it (inadvertently, no doubt) to advance the view that nobody owns any sites or any other property. Statists everywhere must be chortling with glee. Possibly you begin to see why I said, back in 2012, that Paul is an agent of government, here to spread disinformation. I cannot prove that he is being paid for his work; but if he is not, government is getting one helluva valuable freebie.
Rob's choice has two components. First, I think he was wondering "can I keep both Paul and Jim?" - that's what he set out to do in February 2013. I have answered that bit for him: I've quit, so the answer is no, he cannot. That's off the table. So to the second: "Which of them do I prefer?" - for right now he has Paul the Communist but not me, yet he can reverse that if he wishes, by firing Paul and asking me nicely. Whether he will do so, I have no idea. STR is not my property. It's his.

Jim,
Why on Earth would either of you expect Rob to jump in the middle of such a squabble? I have seen nothing that would require action on his part, and frankly I'm glad to see that he has not taken the bait....sticks and stones, after all.
Character assassination (of which your hands are decidedly not clean) serves no purpose in advancing understanding, but the fact remains that the issue in question is an interesting one. I think it is unfortunate that a productive conversation about such core issues seems impossible with you. Any variation from the plum-line philosophy that you have laid out as the "one true way" is not only unacceptable, but dangerous and even inhuman to your mind. I would hope you re-read some of your writing and see how inflammatory it becomes in the face of even the most innocuous criticism.
I'm sorry for you that "freedom" in your mind requires such rigidity of thought. Case in point, the above article: you really didn't defend "rights", instead you made several appeals to authority, and denigrated any differing opinion as "irrational" by equating concrete physical "reality" with conceptual reality-the product of human minds. "Rights" are concepts, nothing more, and as such it is hardly irrational to challenge the basis of such concepts. The very idea that differing opinion ought to be banished rather than debated is, to me, inexplicable. A disagreement is not an attack.
At any rate, while I disagree profoundly with the very essence of your belief system, I do enjoy your writing and see no reason for you to cease publishing here simply because you have a few critics. Of course, if you wish to write elsewhere, or post your articles on a site you control, I wish you well. But, I would encourage Rob to take no action on this issue.
Good luck,
Mike

Alex, zygodactyl and Less, thanks for your comments but you are all wishing for something that is not available. As I said in my reply to Thunderbolt's comment, "I will not return to STR until and unless Bonneau gets the boot." That decision is mine, and it is final.
Although the trigger was Paul's vindictive post of April 1st above, which shattered the promise he had given on 2/27/2013 in response to Rob's comprimise idea, my reasons for making it go back years; but may I remind you that on that point I am in harmony with Paul Bonneau. It was he, not myself, who wrote in Comment 7892 in December 2012 to invite me to make a case to Rob for his eviction; and in a PM to me dated 12/23/2012 he said "there is no way we can both continue here."
I fully agree. Rob has now to choose which of us he wants. If you have an opinion on that choice - the only one available - I expect he'd be glad to hear it. But my decision is made.

I, for one, would like for both Jim and Paul to continue writing here. I enjoy reading both of their articles and comments even though I disagree with each of them from time to time. I have read all of the linked articles and this is what I have seen in summary: Paul's first article was in direct response to one that Jim wrote. Jim's article back then was advising people to grab all of the government funds that they can in the hopes of depriving the government of funds to do more evil. Paul's first article pointed out some of the moral problems with doing that, among other things.
Both of the authors failed to see the elephant that was in the room. That elephant was deficit spending! If I have the power to create money out of thin air, then you are not going to make me run out of money by accepting the dribble of money that I have given you permission to take, and it is incorrect to treat the recipients of that dribble of money as if they are directly taking the money out of the taxpayers pocket. A portion of that dribble also comes from digits being typed into the Federal Reserves' ledger. Since we are presently forced to accept FRNs for nearly all of our transactions, the government really doesn't need to tax our income anyway. They could use sales tax, increase the inflation rate, and do any number of other things instead. The income tax is there to force us to jump through hoops like circus animals every year, and to create strife amongst us like what we are now seeing between Jim and Paul. Debates of this sort are forever circular due to the fact that the numbers are so mobile and liquid.
Both Jim and Paul avoided each other for about a year. Paul posted an article about rights on March 26th to which Jim posted an article with a different point of view 5 days later, to which Paul appeared to have taken as an attack on his article, and Paul responded. Jim, you may not have had any intention of baiting Paul to respond the way he did, but it certainly looks like that is what happened. Let's end the pecker contest. You both have only one.
At Lew Rockwell's web-site not long ago, Gary North wrote a poorly researched article about bit coin , which lead to a counterpoint article here, and more here . Ben Stone, the bad Quaker , also did a pod-cast about it. Gary North continues to write prolifically ,so it is my hope that both Jim and Paul will likewise continue writing here.
Brian

I believe that STR is a better site with both writers. I support Rob's decision not to decide which, as Canadian philosopher Neal Peart stated in his essay on "Free Will" (spoken word version available with narration by Geddy Lee), is still a choice, and a good one.
If I thought one of these writers was making a useful contribution to STR and the other was not, it would be an easy choice, but in my experience different people are persuaded by different arguments and it is in the best interest of liberty and STR for it to welcome writers who argue that natural rights is the foundation of liberty and others who argue that natural rights is a pile of horse manure.
All I care about is increasing the number of people who wish to move toward a society based on mutual respect.

Relax, T-bolt; the fault was altogether Paul Bonneau's, not yours at all. All you did was usefully to draw out the fact that his recently expressed and utterly reprobate opinion that humans have no rights was meant deadly seriously, that he was not being facetious. Rest easy, friend.
I will not return to STR until and unless Bonneau gets the boot. So that's up to Rob. Any who want to advise him can use the link in my Comment 10336.

I would like to echo Thunderbolt's sentiment. Both Jim and Paul have made tremendous contributions to this site and libertarianism in general. There must be a better, more constructive way to resolve this.

Message to Jim and Rob and Paul:
It was I who mentioned Paul, not Jim, who was very careful to make broad statements, rather than name any individual in his article. It is absurd for Jim to leave this space because I pushed two armed combatants into a room together. He has written hundreds of thoughtful articles exclusively for STR. No person comes closer to being the backbone of the site than Jim.
It will be a massive loss for all of us were Jim to leave. I implore Jim to stay and for Rob to insist. That Jim and Paul are enemies has no relevance to this issue. It is the internet, not Dodge City. There is no reason for a shootout, literally or figuratively. Jim and Paul should resume ignoring each other, as they initially agreed. We are all here because we can think for ourselves and decide where reason leads. STR is one of the best libertarian sites ever created. The loss of Jim would be absolutely unnecessary and absolutely unacceptable.

Unwilling to sit still while Paul Bonneau pours sewage like that over my head, last Tuesday I wrote Rob, our Editor, to ask that he be expelled from STR. So far Rob has not done that, so I am myself now departing this web site.
A quick backgrounder: relations between Paul and me had become so bad by the end of 2012 we agreed that STR does not have room for both of us, and he suggested, at the end of his comment 7982, that we each make a case to Rob for the eviction of the other, and accept his choice.
I agreed immediately. Rob did not, however; instead he proposed that we both continue on STR but promise not to refer to the other in what we write. We each agreed to that compromise, on 2/27/2013.
From that day to this, Paul's name has not appeared in anything I've written here, and the converse was true of Paul - until the above venomous, personal attack appeared on April 1st last week, so shattering his promise into small pieces and providing an open-and-shut case for being fired.
Possibly you feel the wrong guy is leaving. If so, you could write Rob to say so.
For those interested, I've posted some farewell remarks here.

Log, you're accurate in saying that government is inherently flawed and therefore susceptible to no perfection. That's very well stated. I'm sorry, though, to read that you see no possible fix.
I think there is. Educate everyone to understand what you just wrote about its vast inherent flaw, then encourage them never to work for it. When nobody will work for it, it will cease to exist.
Start here.